This blog is for online marketers who work with e-commerce, web, online sales, social media, social commerce and the Internet in general. You can find articles about the latest surveys and reports on e-commerce plus get help on how to improve your online sales and conversion rate.

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22 Nov 2010

Are your web shop offering free shipping? Do you have any free shipping campaigns? No? Well, you might want to reconsider. A report from Comscore reveals that most of your competitors have free shipping from time to time. In Q3 2010, 41 per cent of all online retail transactions had free shipping. This is an increase by 6 percentage points from two years earlier. And the customers love it. 55 per cent of the customers indicate that they would be at least somewhat likely to leave their shopping cart without free shipping when they made their purchase.

In another Comscore survey, 84 per cent of consumers answered that free shipping was somewhat or very important to them when making a purchase this holiday season.

If you introduce free shipping, you might think your average shopping cart value will be missing a significant amount: P&P (post and packing). Well, your shopping cart will be missing P&P, however, the cart value will be much higher. In Q3 2010 the average order value for transactions involving free shipping was 41 per cent higher than transactions without free shipping. Still not a fan of free shipping?

18 Nov 2010

You might have noticed that fewer and fewer users are clicking on your affiliate network’s banner or banner in general. It’s no secret: Many companies have lousy clickthrough rates. In plain English this means that fewer and fewer are clicking on fewer and fewer banner ads.

However, a survey done by MediaMind shows the decline in clickthrough rates might have stopped. The decline began long ago and the largest drop in clickthrough rate coincided with the collapse of the Lehmann Brothers in September 2008 and the global economy went down the drain. Since then the clickthrough rates have been declining at a lower pace. An average clickthrough rate declined from 0.15% in 2006 to 0.09% in 2010.

The really good news is that in 2009 and 2010 this decline seems to have stopped. Both in 2009 and in the first eight months of 2010, the average clickthrough rate has remained around 0.09%.

9 Nov 2010

How many passwords do you have? And how often do you forget them or can’t remember which password to use for which site? Don't worry you aren't the only one. But you can help eliminate this problem for visitors to your site. The solution to this menace is to use Social Sign-on. Social Sign-on is simply to let the visitor sign-on using his social media password ie the user can sign-on using his Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or other social media-password. And it's worth the effort to give the visitor the possibility to sign-on using his Social Sign-on a survey from Gigya and Edge Research shows.

In the survey which was done among both e-commerce sites and online publishers two-thirds think they get more value from registered users than non-registered users. There are especially 4 areas which the registered user create value to the website. These are:

Loyalty

Word of mouth

Targeting content

Bottom-line

Loyalty. Registered users are more engaged and more loyal than the visitors which aren't registered. It’s possible to build a relationship with this type of user who in return will visit the site more frequently and generate more page views than an unregistered user.

Word of Mouth. The above mentioned loyalty can create a positive buzz for the company. Three-quarters of the e-commerce sites agree that registered users are more likely to provide more or better user‐generated content and promote the brand.

Targeting content. Majorities also note their ability to target content and promotions to registered users, as well as follow-up with them after completing their purchase.

Bottom‐line. Nine‐in‐ten say that registered users are more likely to purchase their products and services, and improving revenue.